Over the last two weeks of the parliamentary sitting, the Liberal government made a series of moves related to AI and digital regulation. It introduced a new AI strategy, a bill requiring social media platforms to ban kids under 16 and a long-awaited privacy bill. It also moved to block new rules requiring streamers to […]

Information commissioner Caroline Maynard says a federal proposal to narrow the scope of the Access to Information Act is a move in the wrong direction that could exclude “entire swaths of government-held records” from public scrutiny. Maynard makes the blunt warning in a newly published submission to the Treasury Board Secretariat’s latest review of the […]

Montreal’s police department says it knows some Black employees fear reprisals for denouncing racism and misconduct within their ranks. The department made the comments in response to revelations by The Canadian Press on Thursday about a scathing letter sent on June 14 by a committee of Black employees to deputy police director, Marc Charbonneau. “With […]

Your Access and Privacy Online News Summary for Saturday, June 20th. This week: Ottawa moves on privacy, online safety, and surveillance powers; FIPA releases new work on access rights and transparency systems; and New Brunswick’s review of its access and privacy law points to familiar questions about timeliness, recordkeeping, voter privacy, and independent oversight. Writing: Shaun […]

Black employees of the Montreal police force have sent a letter to management saying some have concerns about going to work after the dismantling of a patrol unit over serious allegations of racist misconduct. The letter was dated June 14, two days after senior police officials held a late evening news conference announcing they had […]

Lawyers for an Ontario man accused of stealing and leaking Texan Republican Party data in 2021 say he has pleaded guilty before a Canadian court. In a statement released this afternoon, Arash Ghiassi and Riaz Sayani say Aubrey Cottle has “formally accepted his role” in the hacking of the party’s website five years ago.  Ghiassi […]

A bill winding its way through Sacramento right now would make some of the biggest changes in decades to the California Public Records Act — the 58-year-old state law that guarantees everyone has access to government documents and data. Proponents argue AB 1821 is necessary to help local governments weather a deluge of burdensome requests […]

A large, dark wound protrudes from the side of the deer’s head, stretching from the base of its antler toward its ear. The animal’s big, dark eyes reflect a weary helplessness.  That’s the hauntingly “heartbreaking” image that stared back at animal rights lawyer Kaitlyn Mitchell from her computer screen after a Marineland employee reached out […]

The lawyer for former Calgary mayor Jyoti Gondek is arguing police have no reason to hold onto her phone any longer as they investigate her and others for municipal corruption. “An admission that there is no timeline, that there’s no capability, there’s not specific step plan for this phone within the year is the opposite […]

MOMBASA, Kenya (AP) — Fifteen countries from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific adopted a declaration on Wednesday to step up efforts to combat illegal fishing, a practice that experts say costs the world economy up to $50 billion annually. The Mombasa Declaration, named after the Kenyan city hosting the 11th Our Ocean […]

Police in some of Quebec’s largest metropolitan regions have handed out thousands of fines over the past six years to citizens for allegedly hurling insults at officers or other municipal officials, according to internal data obtained by The Canadian Press.  Quebec City police have largely driven these numbers, issuing 11,092 fines between April 1, 2020, […]

The federal government wants to be “super careful” as it tackles surveillance pricing, Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said after tabling the government’s new privacy bill. Under the plan outlined by Solomon, those rules on surveillance pricing are unlikely to be in place before 2028. “It’s very easy to say just ban using personal information […]